Ch 3: Chicken Soup for Soul

I am currently sitting in between two very unhappy women. One is barely a year old, the other could probably kill me with the tube of ointment she's holding. Both are glaring at me out of misery. I feel awful. I knew that eventually Evy would have chickenpox, so I was prepared to handle the grumbling baby. I had no idea that one of our resident assassins had never gotten the disease and wasn't immune to it. I'll never forget the look on Natasha's face when Bruce asked her, as she held my sick little girl, if she was immune to chicken pox. It's that one moment where you don't even comprehend the possibility that you are susceptible to disease and then that sudden realization hits that a childhood ailment could come back with a vengeance. Well no sooner then Bruce had mentioned it, Nat showed him the rash that had been bothering her since that morning: shingles.

I still feel awful and guilty. Before Evy was born, I had studied all the parenting books, so I knew how dangerous it was for a non-immune adult to be around a child with chickenpox. I just never expected Natasha, the Black Widow, to be taken down by something as commonplace as chickenpox. I was willing to try everything to make it up to her.

So when the team was called out on a cursory mission, guess who stayed behind to take care of them both?
"I don't want that." She told me with a look of pure malice as I entered the room with a bowl of chicken noodle soup.
"Now, Natasha," I guess I reverted back to the same fatherly tone I use with Evy. "You need to eat if you're going to feel better." She actually took the bowl and dumped it in the trashcan next to her.
"I refuse to eat, speak about, or watch anything that pertains to 'chicken', do you understand Rogers?" If she was using my last name only, that couldn't be a good sign. As if on cue, Evy gave an indignant cry and threw her teething ring on the ground. Of all the role models my daughter could imitate, did it have to be a deadly assassin with a grudge?
"That's right дорогой." The sick woman shuffled over to the play pin and picked up the baby. "Not all of us have a serum-enhanced immune systems." As she started to walk away with Evy, I tried to intervene-they really should rest!
"Knock it off Rogers. We're miserable, not dying, and right now we're going to watch Anastasia, do you have a problem with that?" I shook my head violently.

And so I sat on the corner of the couch as the two cuddled up to watch a show that the assassin couldn't stand, unless it was for the sake of her sick godchild. Sometime between the weird villain song and the Paris number, the two had drifted off into a well-needed sleep. Covering them with a soft blanket and giving Evy a soft kiss on her beautiful head, I let them rest. Two days later, Thor joined the group, but he chose to eat the soup I made heartily.